About JP Whiting

About JP Whiting

Hi. I’m JP Whiting, an abstract artist in Calgary.

After 10+ years of painting, I decided to share my art with the world as part of my “First Fifty” collection. The goal of this collection was to make original art more affordable and accessible to Calgarians while at the same time chipping away at my 10,000 hours of experience. This project kick-started my career as an emerging Alberta artist and thanks to support from organizations like Avenue Magazine and the Alberta’s Children’s Hospital Foundation, my art was shared with an even wider audience.

Like many abstract artists, my aesthetic has evolved drastically over the years.As a graphic artist in the early-2000s, my work was rendered entirely digitally using hundreds of layers over each other. At this time, I was inspired by the cutting and pasting of existing images to create entirely new image.

In later years, I had created mixed-media pieces, again using layers upon layers, creating non-digital versions of my once digital-only technique. This method has included acrylics, inks, collage, transfers and pretty much anything else that creates interest. This process was messy, experimental and fun but I lacked consistency in the emotion I was trying to convey and I couldn’t help but be mesmerized by the spill-off from my paintings.

I started to realize the lack of control opened up incredible possibility – it was the accidental capture of organic movement that really inspired me. When left in the hands of gravity and chemical reaction, paint can perform an incredibly beautiful dance. For me, this “capture” paralleled a photo of a galaxy, or a cut geode, maybe a view of riverbanks or reefs from space. There is a familiarity that even in my art room, the same universal laws and visual language are at play.